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For the background, see below and the earlier, “Focusing My Efforts – Before…” but this blog concerns the second part, after my Mother’s death. Similarly it shows my thinking and expectations at that time, both would be subject to considerable change and for that alone to me, worth remembering the ‘difference’.

So, Part Two…

The Time of Personal Change – Posted January 30th, 2010

Early last Saturday morning I called the Ambulance and my Mother was taken into Weston Hospital. It was an “odd call” in the sense that there was not any one specific ailment to point to like say a heart attack. Possibly she had Flu, certainly a leg infection that was very painful plus she has the most awful pressure sore on her bottom. In fact it turned out that she had three separate infections but none responded to treatment.

I visited her and spoke to her on Sunday morning when she was a bit gibberish truth to tell but as I looked at her lying in her bed, I was taken straight back to a Hospital in Wandsworth in the late 1970’s where her Mother was just prior to her death, exact same look. When I visited again later that afternoon, she was very deeply asleep although she was apparently pretty sparky that evening when my eldest Son, his wife and my Granddaughter visited her.

The Ward she was in didn’t allow visiting until 14:30 so whilst I was going to be there at that time on the Monday, the Ward Sister called me and suggested that I might want to come in earlier, the reality being that my Mother had slipped into a coma and was not expected to survive, too many health issues combined with being 89 years old about sums it up. I asked for a Priest and he gave her the “Last Rites” and then together we said some of the “Prayers for the Dying” over her, proper formality was served.

All treatment was withdrawn because none of it was working so apart from keeping her comfortable and free from pain, the aim was to let her die with dignity. Unless you start pumping large quantities of Morphine in which they did not do with my Mother, there is no knowing how long this process takes but this was a Lady with a long list of ailments any of which would have floored most people long since made it well into her 90^th year.

An Odd Period

My eldest Son, his Wife and my Granddaughter kept a bedside vigil until Wednesday evening when she passed away at 18:20. I had sat with my Mother for about 3 hours each day in the mornings quietly reading my Bible but there is little more to be done than that. As a believer in a ‘Life After Death’, on her passing, she was not alone. Her three sisters, Babs, Winnie and Ilean would be there as too her parents Maggie and Mick Bagnell, of course my Father Frank and their son and my brother Michael plus numerous others long since passed on, all would have been there to ease her journey to the “Other Side”, she was accompanied on the journey.

The Immediate

Because my Mother’s death marks the passing of a generation, there are a number of formalities to be dealt with, Reporting the death to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, choose an Undertaker, they are the key element in making arrangements as smooth as possible, talk to the Solicitor to line up Probate. Fortunately, it will be a simple estate be to deal with because it is really just the house with very little cash, no outstanding tax affairs and well below the Inheritance Tax threshold.

Going Forward

I will stay in Burnham and the house will go through a two stage transformation. When I moved down 6 years ago, I deliberately didn’t change much here, the objective was that my Parents could live and die in “their home surrounded with their things”. Now of course I need to change it into “My Home” and reflect my tastes. With a shortage of funds, paint, some modest flooring/furniture changes and putting up my pictures on the wall, should do the trick. When I have found a way of earning a living again, maybe in a couple of years, I will go in for more structural works involving the dreaded “Builders” but the house has potential !

Of course and for me there will be a major psychological realignment to be made, I still wake during the night listening as if I could still hear my Mother downstairs in her bedroom. There is also the strange notion that I now have freedom again, I can get a coach to London for the day, visit Bristol or spend all day cycling around the Somerset Levels taking photographs, things just not possible over these past years.

Adjustments

In a sense and to any outsider, these changes to my life being so obvious should be easy to adjust to but strangely perhaps, they are not and two examples from my previous experiences come to mind.

For many years I was a commuter cyclist in London, for various reasons I had to move to the outskirts of West London and a friend of mine told me: “As you will no longer be a commuter cyclist, you will need to adjust your thinking from just transport to riding just for pleasure.” He was absolutely right and it took a while to convert my thinking from a bike being “daily transport” to being something you used just for fun.

The other one was even odder in a sense because it concerned digital photography. At Christmas 2000, I was an early adopter of the DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera. Now admittedly, the memory cards to store the pictures which replaced wet film, were not just expensive but had nowhere near the capacity they have today. But stupidly, it did take me a number of years to get buried into my brain that you could take more than 36 pictures on a card ! I can remember going to an Air Show and taking 1,000 pictures across many cards and was just gob smacked when I unloaded them onto the PC.

Although it will take time to adjust, I have deliberately perhaps, left myself a number of challenges both in the house and the garden to work on which will be part of that process of transition.

Closure – Posted February 16th, 2010

Today was the day of my Mother’s Funeral and Cremation. It was almost 3 weeks since she died and this is an unusually long time but bought about by my choice in wanting the immediate family all present. The Requiem Mass was kept simple and I think that it worked best that way. Whilst a number of people couldn’t attend for various health or other reasons, the turnout was rather better than I expected.

For me after coming home from the Crematorium, there was a sudden lifting of spirits in the sense that as came home there was a positive sense of both the past and the future, a sense of moving on and for me the start of my own “healing” and to renew forward progress.

Introduction:

The following is the Funeral Oration for my Mother as I wrote it but, I am experienced in ‘presentations’ so this is not quite what I delivered verbatim but it was what I delivered in the key points even if in reality, slightly abbreviated and altered here and there.

Oration

Good morning. The other week talking to one of my Sons, a rather obvious thought occurred to me: At any funeral the person I am mourning is likely a totally different one to the one you are mourning. To my Sons and Daughter-in-Laws, they mourn a Grandmother. My Granddaughter, her Great Grandmother. Her nieces an Aunt, for others a dear friend, for yet others someone who was once active in this Parish but what for me her only surviving son ?

Leave that for the moment as an open question that I will return to shortly and having resolved.

Over the past week or so I have been emptying cupboards and drawers of the accumulation of my parents almost 30 years in Burnham on Sea, to be honest a rather tedious and sometimes depressing task however at the back of one cupboard a wonderful delight was lurking.

I had a brother Michael, he was two years older than me and was destined to die in New York in 1978, we both went to Art School. At the back of this cupboard I found a portfolio of Michael’s early Life Class drawings and a sketch book, these must be coming up for 50 years old. In an instant I was taken straight back to my childhood and the sheer joy of it all made especially so by having a lovely Father and a quite splendid Mother, no two people could have been better Parents to two young boys.

I think that “house-work” was a concept that was totally foreign to my Mother or, perhaps she didn’t understand the ‘necessity’ but did either Michael or I care ? Hardly because there was a ‘Silver Lining’ to this which we both knew about at the time.

• Visit other school friends at home and it was all,”Shoes taken off at the door, one biscuit,weak Tea and total dramas about nothing.”

• Come Home and there was none of that !

As with all siblings, we physically fought each other every day but, I well remember the day we stopped and our very last fight. I was about 13, Michael 15 and although of similar height, then as today, I was the more substantial so I picked him up and threw him across the room. He landed on the 3 seater sofa in the bay window, neatly between cushion and armrest but with a sickening crack as the wooden frame underneath the upholstery gave way giving the whole thing a distinct list to Port.

Our Mother and later our Father perused the result and yet, not a word was said and no reproach given, an old sofa was not that important in the scheme of things…

Whether as young children sitting at my Mother’s feet by a blazing coal fire with her reading us Kipling’s “If” poem, yes corny but still as true today as when it was written or later as my brother and I struggled to come to terms with teenage life in the 1960’s, my memories will always be of love and not one of “I told you so”.

Her Achievements

But beyond my memories of a wonderful Mum and childhood, I would like to tell you something about her talents and achievements. Throughout her life, my Mother loved animals and had an amazing ability to communicate with them. I can remember us having tropical fish and a Siamese Fighter called “Winston”. My Mother could call this fish to the surface, put her hand in the tank and he be happy to be lifted out of the water, be talked to and then gently, be put back in the tank. It impressed me as a child then, but today with greater experience, just how could you communicate with a Fish ?

In the 1950’s my Parents decided that we would breed Bulldogs who turned out to be the most wonderful characters, particularly with children. My Mother got terribly involved in the respective Bulldog Associations however, she soon realised that in pursuit of money, there were far too many bad breeding practices going on. At that time an Association representing Hunting Dogs set up a regulated breeding programme through the Kennel Club to ensure that their dogs remained both pure and healthy and the “breeding lines” were fully traceable with no in breeding for “Look” which is something that has plagued all dog breeding in this country.

My Mother by then also a Judge at dog shows, started a campaign for the Bulldog Association to do the same even getting the London Newspapers involved in her campaign but she was up against powerful vested interests, so called pedigree Bulldogs sold at a premium then as they still do today so after a time, she resigned all her positions in that world and we stopped breeding Bulldogs but of course kept the dogs we had.

In fact the proof that she was so right came from the first litter she bred from which we kept one dog, my friend and mentor, Sam.

He was a truly magnificent and rather large Bulldog, I would sit beside him and talk to him for ages about my latest hair brained scheme and never, in my opinion, was ever such wise council given me in total silence but accompanied with the odd big lick, he was ever so wise was Sam. My heart was broken when at the age of seven and a half, in a hot Summer, Sam died of a heart attack and sometime after we had given up breeding dogs.

In that same litter, Sam had a sister, the same dark brindle as her Mother but with a white spot, the shape of a Tulip, in the middle of her forehead so, no prizes for guessing what name Tulip got then. She was the odd one in the litter with even as a pup, rather long legs and a narrower chest than usual. Fully grown she was at a casual glance, more like a Boxer until you looked at her head and face. She was described as a “throwback” to her breeding line but in truth, she was more like the prints you can find of the original working Bulldogs.

Bought by a business lady as a canine companion they always kept in touch, Christmas Cards and the occasional visit so I can assure you that this very healthy “throwback” lived until the age of 14 and obviously my Mum knew about this but never a word of “I told you so, I was right…” A Lady of great passion as befitted her Celtic origins and one that would hold strong opinions at times that were not always totally correct however vehemently expressed. But let me assure you, when Mum was right, she was very right indeed, it took 55 years for the BBC to catch up with her and last year refuse to televise Cruffts Dog Show because of this very same thing across all breeds.

To Close:

I will try not to mourn my Mother but always rejoice in her. The signal event was in October 2008 when she had two heart attacks and spent almost two months in hospital and from that these last 15 months have been to witness a slow decline, the last two most awful. Shall I remember my Mum as this ? No Never ever, this was just an ‘old person’.

Over there lie the mortal remains of my Mother but she is not here, she has been in Spirit sometime already. I will remember her beside blazing fires in mid winter, under trees of dappled shade in summer and always with joy in my heart and hardly ever in infirmity. I thank Almighty God for my Mother for both my Brother and myself and as a Celtic handmaiden, I honour her both in life and death as my personal Boudiccia.

Moving Forward – Posted February 22nd, 2010

Following the death of my Mother and clearing out the main living areas of the house ready for redecoration, packing, boxing and putting away stuff, it is now time to start moving forward again. Often people say after such events, “getting back to normal” but, I don’t really have a ‘normal’ only a tomorrow, a sort of blank canvas.

However and that said, there is something from the past I have to recover and that is my normal level of fitness which due to foot problems, weather and looking after my Mother, has fallen quite a lot since the New Year and was probably responsible for some of the infections I picked up towards the end of last year.

Back to Riding

One habit I established after our dog Jack died was going for a morning bike ride. After Pops died at Easter 2007, once I had got Ma up, safely seated, watered and fed, I would go out for an hour bike ride up to the River Brue Estuary where I combined my daily exercise with photography and gradually, became interested in our local wildlife plus, I met quite a number of local people who were up at that time of the morning, walking their dogs and so on.

I was talking to one our District Nurses and she told me that patients admitted to Hospital, normally lost muscle tone within 14 days so contemplating my options yesterday, I decided that today was the start of a “rebuilding programme” for me, bad toe or not. I started with some bench sit-ups and then went for my usual ride which because of my lay off, was very difficult especially with a head wind coming home !

It was and remains my intention to cycle all of the Somerset Levels over the next year or so but I realised that as I have so much immediate work to do on the house and gardens, I will not be able to get that project off the ground just yet. Therefore although for slightly different reasons, I will return to my morning rides as a means of rebuilding my fitness and keeping my hand in for cycling. However and as I’m starting from way behind where I was, I will probably have to do an awful lot more just to kick start things, a closely monitored diet and ‘extra’ exercise, no excuse not to do it now.

Thinking of Work

Aiming to get back to work at the age of 64 may not seem that easy but, it is just a case of where you look I guess and what your “expectations” are. I do not need a massive income, probably £12-15k a year after tax is likely enough for my needs, I do not have a mortgage to pay but at that level, I want to have some days free for my own photography and digital artwork.

I used to earn that in less than two months as a Project Manager in IT but am unlikely to get back to anything like that given my age and the current economic circumstances. Additionally, such roles are a 100% commitment of time and effort however and all that said, I will rule nothing in or out at this stage so how to proceed ?

What I’m working on is merging two of my existing web sites into one with the aim of targeting “Work” and regardless of whether that is in IT or my photography. It is a bit of an experiment that includes some of my pictures and a summary of the sort of things that I have done, not a conventional CV that is for sure but then again, worth a try.

Some Jolly News

A dear but totally mad French friend of mine is threatening to visit for a week or so after Easter to “Help with the decorating”, she says and I know she will too. That will be fun, we get on well and always have a laugh together so that is both someone and something to look forward to in the early Spring.

I like going to Air Shows, have always been nuts on anything that flies since being a kid but because of my Parent’s state of health, the last one I went to was in 2006. One of my neighbours is keen on them too and came over yesterday to invite me to the Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in June – excellent ! Fairford has had two bad years in a row because of bad weather, maybe this year will be good, loads of photographic opportunities – brilliant !

The Road Ahead

I have already started on my amalgamated work web site and my aim will be to have that ready for launch by over next weekend but, as I have copy yet to write and graphics to edit plus the most important and truth to tell boring bit – testing all links and compatibility with various web browsers, it could run late.

This week more clearing and reorganizing so that I can clear the decks to start some serious decorating,one of the key objectives being to clear physical space so that furniture can be moved out of each room and safely stored in another whilst decorating is taking place, trying to decorate around furniture is a total nightmare. Although this Chalet Bungalow is not that big if you were looking at a “Family House”, compared to the average City Flat, it is huge and offers me a wonderful space to live my life in and great potential.

I suspect that between the house and the gardens the next 3 months will be pretty well taken up, get a ‘proper job’ and everything will get rather extended ! The gardens will be the most pressing challenge because once this bad weather leaves us, lurking in the background is the start of Spring when I will be ‘running fast to stand still’ as Mother Nature kicks in and everything comes to life.

High Tide, High Spirits – Posted March 4th, 2010

I have commented upon before just how very “special” the quality of the light is here in the West and particularly on the Somerset Levels. As I promised myself I have got back into doing my morning cycle rides and just at the right time too because this week we have had the high Spring Tides. I understand that the Bristol Channel has the second highest tidal rise and fall in the World after Newfoundland, we have a +12 metre or, 40′ in real money, tidal range at the peak.

On both Monday and Tuesday we had the most glorious mornings, clear sky, some frost and Spring Tides, these following scaled down pictures just don’t do it full justice. Perhaps it is the romantic inside of me but the sheer glory of such mornings make my heart sing and my spirits soar !

I hope the following give a flavour of the magic that such a morning brings.

Are We Now Totally Incompetent ? – Posted March 21st, 2010

I pose the question as in; “Are we now totally incompetent as a Nation ? The reason I raise the question lies in three recent experiences, two to do with Banks and a Motorway Service stop on the M4. Having been “off the scene” for almost 6 years looking after my parents, I wonder if this is the world of commerce that I am returning to ?

It is probably a sign of age but there are some things that really irritate me a lot and cause a disproportionate amount of frustration although, they are slightly different in nature than my main topic.

For Instance…

A good example being that for some reason best known to themselves, we get “power outages” on our electricity supply at home but, only for a few seconds – why ? I then have to go and reset the clocks on the microwave and conventional oven, the timing device on the latter having been designed by a total idiot and resetting it may result in getting the time right or having the oven turn itself on in the middle of the night ! I find the unpredictability, rather unsettling

Having reached the age of 64, I have had to become used whilst cooking to ‘putting’ saucepan lids on a worktop only to see them mysteriously ‘throw themselves’ on the kitchen floor and whilst ironing, the flex of said iron to wrap itself around my foot so that either it or I ‘come crashing down’ if either moves away too far ! However and having had very fast reflexes throughout my life, I can understand that likely such ‘incidents’ are caused by my ageing. My mind is still 21 and ‘holding’, my body 64 and ‘resentful’, the consequence of a few nano-seconds difference, the saucepan lid or iron hits the floor !

No, Not At All…Banks

About a year ago, I started saving money on a regular basis into an ‘associated account’ to my current account. No problem, it was as a preparation for when my Mum died, I would need extra cash and I would become responsible for paying the monthly bills, time to get into training ! Frankly, all my ‘banking’ is done over the web and obviously you can print out your own statements however, I realised that I didn’t get a monthly statement on this ’savings account’ and as it is just a linked ’secondary account’ to my current account which is all that it is, why it isn’t mentioned on my monthly statement.

I raised this issue with my Bank and after some months, got an incomprehensible reply from them so frankly, didn’t bother further until…

Post My Mother’s Death

My Mother banked with a certain former Building Society, now a Bank and Spanish owned. She had two accounts, a current and a savings one and into the latter she put all the funds to pay her funeral and Probate costs. The Solicitor on applying to freeze all transactions on her accounts was told that she only had a current account…

It was to take a lot of shouting and screaming before some brain dead Muppet replied in writing that yes she did have a savings account of this number and containing this amount of money. The simple fact was that apart from me knowing of this account, there was actually no proof that it existed and the the staff of the particular Bank, clearly did not have access to or, understand how to use Relational Databases which if they did, would have shown up any and all accounts held by that person at that address with that date of birth.

The conclusion was even funnier: my surname is Haynes and on the letter to me, it was correctly addressed until it got to “Dear Mr Hayes…” and this on the same page ! It got even better: all I ever wanted was written acknowledgement of the existence of this account so that when Probate was granted, I could get the funds to pay off the funeral and Probate costs.

For whatever reason, these people decided to give me “…as a gesture of goodwill…” a cheque made out to a Mr Hayes for £55. I have no idea how they arrived at this figure, my guess is that in additional Solicitors charges, their incompetence has likely cost me at least £250. I sent the cheque back to them so that they could pay Mr Hayes – whoever he maybe. Just how totally hopeless can anyone be and still get paid a salary ?

In Parallel

I also pursued my own Bank because I realised that there was absolutely no proof that I had a separate savings account, a stranger dealing with my affairs after my death would have no expectation that there was anything other than my current account.

Very reluctantly and with no good manners or grace what so ever, I got an annual statement on my savings account so that finally in my file and as a “note for the babysitter”, there is proof of both my bank accounts. My conclusion on this is fairly simple, no wonder we had a banking crisis, these people have no idea how to run their own businesses, the miracle is that the whole lot didn’t collapse long ago.

Food

Having the ‘freedom’ to undertake a longish journey is still a novel experience for me but the other week I had to visit a friend to sort out their IT needs. The journey was 168 miles each way and from where I live was M5, M4, M25 so having had to make an early start, I decided to target a breakfast after about 100 miles which meant the Services at Reading.

Much mourned are the “Little Chefs”, the only eatery I can remember where you could buy a really decent, grease free variation on the “Full English Breakfast” – oh where are you “Olympic Breakfast” of yesteryear much loved and mourned by all ?

I tried my arm at the Reading Services version of an “English Breakfast” served up by someone of, I suspect Eastern European origins with the same indolent disinterest last seen in the 1970s by grumpy middle aged old bats at Watford Gap Services on the M1. Suffice to say, the food matched, both inedible and expensive – I had time travelled, all I needed was Gene Hunt and I could be in an episode of Ashes to Ashes !

To be fair to the Operators, they had a web site where you could post negative comments for others to see plus, when I complained at their HQ web site, after a week or 10 days of silence, I got a well crafted letter that not only apologised but answered all my specific points, which showed that it wasn’t a standard letter written by the local Manager. They also enclosed vouchers that more than covered my costs so, fair enough, to me they were far more on the ball than the two Banks I had had to deal with.